Pillow Talk
by Arraydesign
Summary: Early in the Santos Administration. Josh and Donna deal with sleeping habits.


Title: **Pillow Talk 1/1**

**Post Series, but early in the Santos term**

Summary: Fluff and silliness

Disclaimers: Not mine. Not at all.

Feedback: please oh please

I'm hot.

Too hot.

And I can't breathe.

Someone is holding a cloth across my mouth and nose. I try to struggle, but there's a heavy weight across my legs and upper arm. I'm frantically searching for air, tossing my head in panic, when the back of my head makes contact with a satisfying crunch.

"Jeez-us, Donna!"

And at the expletive I'm awake, grabbing at the pillow that's over my head and flinging it across the room. I'm still gasping as I sit up. Josh is up on one elbow, his other hand clutching at his nose, and I can see blood between his fingers.

"Oh my god! Josh… I'm sorry…it was the pillow...I was being smothered…I…" his eyes are full of pain, with just a pinch of guilt, "Lie back down… I'll get a wet cloth."

"I'm sorry," he says as I head to the bathroom.

"Pinch at the bridge of your nose," I call as I run a couple of face cloths under the cold water.

He's sitting up, with his head tipped back when I return. I hold one face cloth to the back of his neck, while he tries to wipe the blood off his face with the other.

"You don't think it's broken do you?" I ask.

"I think it would hurt more if it was. Is it swollen?"

"Not yet. You might have black eyes though…"

He sighs and puts his head down on his knees. "Oh great. I can just imagine explaining that! Yeah… ah… my girl friend gave me these black eyes in her sleep!"

"Oh, and it's better for me how, exactly?" I tip his head back to get better light, "Hmm… no… I think they'll be okay."

He moans again and puts his head down again.

"I'm sorry," I say again.

"Me too."

"We have to solve this you know."

"I'm trying…it's just… I've done this for so long…."

"I don't know how you can breathe…That's what wakes me up all the time… lack of air… dreaming I'm being suffocated… How did you start sleeping like that anyways? Your mother claims you didn't do it when you were little."

He looks sheepish. I have a feeling that it's a stupid story.

"I started doing it at college. My room mate Chris was kind of a jerk sometimes. The pillow helped keep out the noise."

I'm puzzled. "You couldn't just close your door? Wear earplugs?"

"Yeah…I did all that… I needed the pillow too."

"He wouldn't just shut up?"

"Well, not him so much, as her…"

"Oh…" I can feel myself flushing. When I look back at Josh he's turning kind of crimson too, which is not usual for him. This kind of stuff doesn't usually embarrass him… he's more likely to make some kind of snarky joke about his roommate… and then it dawns on me… it's not the what so much as the who.

"Oh god..." I say under my breath... "Amy… now there's something I was probably happier not knowing."

"I wasn't really planning on telling you."

"Come on Josh… it takes 21 consecutive days to develop a habit..."

"I wasn't counting," he interrupts, " but I'm pretty sure it was longer than that."

I close my eyes. "Ewww! No! I meant it'll take 21 consecutive nights without the pillow over your face to break the habit."

"I've been trying…I don't go to sleep with it like that anymore! It just happens in the night… I didn't do it in Hawaii…"

"That's 'cause there wasn't really that much sleep going on, as I recall."

He grins which makes him wince and say "Ow!"

"Has it stopped bleeding?"

"I don't think so…"

"I'll get some ice cubes." I walk out to the kitchen and call back to him "And you **did** use a pillow on your face in Hawaii… every time you had a nap I'd find you with your face covered"

"I did not have naps!" he says indignantly, followed by "Ow!"

I retrieve couple of ice cubes from the freezer and wrap them in a dish towel.

"Josh, you were dead to the world for two to three hours every afternoon that we were there!"

"I was not… I was just resting my eyes."

He is so like a four year old. "Josh, it's okay… that's what you were supposed to do. It was a vacation. You were supposed to catch up on your sleep. God knows you weren't doing that at night." I smile and put the cold pack on the bridge of his nose.

"Oh god that's cold!"

"Hold this and I'll get you a clean cloth…It looks like it's stopped bleeding, and it's more or less the same shape as usual… I think you'll live."

"I don't take naps." He mutters under his breath.

"Okay.. you were resting your eyes… against the hot tropical sun… with a pillow over them to help keep out the light…. practicing deep and relaxed breathing."

"You got it."

"Here." I say, handing him a clean face cloth, "Wash your face again."

"Did I get it all?"

"Mmm hmm. Almost," I take the cloth and wipe a spot he missed, "Think you'll live?"

"I think you might need to kiss it and make it better," he suggests petulantly.

Didn't I say four years old? I lean in and kiss him very gently on the nose, on the forehead, and then a little more intensely on the lips. He hooks one finger on the front of my tank top, hauls me a little closer, and drops an ice cube down my front. Needless to say I shriek and jerk back. He's grinning a mile wide, but he has one hand up to protect his nose.

I fish the ice cube out, tossing it in one hand, "You will be very sorry," I caution.

"Yeah… What you going to do? I'm injured now… you have to be nice to me."

"I **have** been nice to you," I say pointedly, "and now I'm getting up, having a shower…. by myself, and getting dressed."

"But it's Sunday…."

"It certainly is." I pick up the pillow that started this whole thing and toss it back on to the bed.

"And we don't have to go in to work…"

"We certainly don't," and you see, now I'm enjoying myself. Now we're coming to the negotiating.

"Wait..." he says.

I look back at him, and there's a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes are shining.

He's formulating a strategy. I arch one eye brow. I still have the ice cube. I run it slowly down my cheek, and then slide it into my mouth.

"Oh come on!" he says, "That's not fair!"

I lick my lips and show him the ice cube between my teeth, and then suck it back in to my mouth. Too hard. It rockets into the back of my throat. I gasp for breath, and in a moment I'm down on my knees coughing and choking, and Josh leaps off the bed and pounds me on the back as I gag up the ice cube, and suck in some air.

"You okay?"

There are tears streaming down my face as I cough and nod my head.

His brown eyes shift from worried to amused. "Now, where were we?" he wonders, "Oh yeah… we were talking about where we were going to spend Sunday…" and he kisses me long and hard, pulling me back onto the bed.

And you know, this is where I wanted to end up anyways. But just to make a point, I reach around him, without stopping the kiss, and wing his pillow back across to the other side of the room. He stops for a moment as I slide my pillow over under my head.

"Hey! I don't get a pillow?" he whines.

"Come on Josh… you've been sharing mine anyways…it's always your pillow that ends up over my face.

"So, no pillows…."

"One pillow…mine… until you can stop smothering me."

"Hmmm." He wraps himself around me, and kisses me briefly, " but that's only with the pillow, right? I can still smother you with affection… or with kisses… or gifts….or attention…" He's punctuating this all with kisses down my neck and around my ear, which is making me giggle.

"Okay… okay…only metaphorical smothering… not literal," I concede. And I can feel him smiling against my throat as I pull him closer.


End file.
